The toolbox is empty. Russia knows this. Biden knows this. Blinken knows this. CNN knows this. The only ones who aren’t aware of this are the American people. The consequences of a US rejection of Russia’s demands will more than likely be war. If you think the American people are ready to bear the burden of a war with Russia, think again.

There is one last hope for the United States. It does not lie in the ballot box. It lies in the union organizing and strikes by workers at Amazon, Starbucks, Uber, Lyft, John Deere, Kellogg, the Special Metals plant in Huntington, West Virginia, the Northwest Carpenters Union, Kroger, teachers in Chicago, and the members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.

Imperialism is not only instantiated in military force and unilateral sanctions deployed to influence the sovereign political and economic affairs of a state for the benefit of an external one. Imperialism is manifest in the everyday organizing principles of the entire global economy, of which states in the Global North (including Canada) have inaugurated themselves as the rulers.

Recent sabre-rattling over China arises out of an embedded military network known as the “San Francisco” system. Constructed in the aftermath of the Second World War, the network of bilateral alliance was designed to thwart decolonization and assure the Pacific would become an “American Lake.” To this day, the US maintains hundreds of military installations and tens of thousands of troops in the region.

The Five Eyes spy network was established in 1948. Conventional histories portray its formation as the natural culmination of years of wartime collaboration in the fight against fascism. What that story conceals, however, is the common lineage of these countries as settler colonial states formed through the dispossession of Indigenous peoples.

A movement with a distorted sense of individual rights that would seek to hamper vaccination in the midst of a global health crisis is reactionary to the core and hostile to human life itself. The dangerous rise of the anti-vax far-right is a symptom of a sickness in this society that we will still be confronting well after the last wave of the pandemic has finally receded.

Far from enhancing Canadian security, CSIS and the Five Eyes are enmeshing this country in a campaign of disinformation and propaganda regarding China reminiscent of the McCarthy era in the United States when government agencies went on a witch hunt against anyone who dissented from US foreign policy. No one should be left alone to take on this formidable arm of settler colonialism.

A few years ago, Huawei was on its way to becoming a household name in Canada through its sponsorship of the ever-popular “Hockey Night in Canada” broadcast by Rogers Communications. Huawei smartphones were becoming competitive with Apple and Samsung devices. And Bell and Telus had been partnering with Huawei in deploying their high-speed networks. So, what went wrong?

Amid the wreckage of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States and its allies have turned their sights on China. University of Victoria professor emeritus and historian John Price examines the rise of the coalition of Anglo settler colonial states of Canada, the United Kingdom, the US, Australia, and New Zealand, and how they are today fomenting war in the Asia Pacific.

In a true democracy, government policy generally reflects the will of the people and prioritizes the interests of the most vulnerable citizens. By that standard, the United States is no democracy at all. Indeed, we Canadians should stop describing and thinking of America as a “democracy.” Instead, we should acknowledge the reality of what our neighbour to the south has become.